Tatum Hartford presented her passport for its first-ever stamp in 2023, ahead of a faculty-led trip to Sorrento, Italy, alongside about a dozen classmates who, like her, were wrapping up their first year in the Judith Herb College of Arts, Social Sciences and Education.
The opportunity came through Palmer Global Fellows, a program supporting global experiential learning experiences within the college.
Tatum Hartford, an art history senior, researched a little-known sculpture in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art at the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin.
And it was just the beginning.
“Palmer Global Fellows has totally changed the trajectory of my college experience,” said Hartford, an art history senior who recently returned from a second study abroad experience supported by the program — this time a three-week trip to complete research and network at art museums across Europe. “Half of the things that I’ve done thus far, I wouldn’t have been able to do without it.”
Palmer Global Fellows, launched with the support of donors Thomas and Susan Palmer in 2023, offers a passport to every first-year student in the Judith Herb College of Arts, Social Sciences and Education. The program also funds two study abroad opportunities for about a dozen fellows each year who are selected through a competitive application process.
Palmer Global Fellows is one of two global experiential learning programs housed within the college, joining the Rocket Kids program that recruits and trains students to provide quality child development at U.S. Army bases across Europe.
“International experience is invaluable for our students who will be graduating into an increasingly global world,” said Dr. Melissa Gregory, dean of the Judith Herb College of Arts, Social Sciences and Education. “These unique co-curricular opportunities open doors for students to develop leadership skills and advance their career aspirations while exploring the world around them.”
A member of the inaugural cohort of Palmer Global Fellows, Hartford brought a strong interest in art history and curation to UToledo, supported by hands-on experience through the Teen Leaders program at the Toledo Museum of Art. The Toledo native joined the outreach program as a student at the Toledo School for the Arts.
Once she enrolled in the art history program at UToledo, she was excited to learn about the Art Museum Practices Concentration that furthered her engagement with the museum and gave shape to her curatorial career aspirations.
The three studio and art history courses that support the concentration emphasize professional standards, practices and procedures used in contemporary museums of art. It also challenges students to curate an exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art, working closely with museum staff and Dr. Thor J. Mednick, a professor of art history, to select a theme and corresponding works from the museum’s collection.
A member of the inaugural cohort of Palmer Global Fellows, Tatum Hartford brought a strong interest in art history and curation to UToledo, supported by hands-on experience through the Teen Leaders program at the Toledo Museum of Art.
Mednick drew on his deep connections to art museum experts across Europe to help Hartford develop her recent study abroad itinerary in Poland, Germany and Denmark.
“Working with Tatum has been the outstanding privilege of my career — a singular opportunity,” Mednick said. “In my initial meeting with a clearly gifted student, I laid out everything we could possibly do to put her in the best possible position for the career she wants. Tatum was ready, willing and eager for every part of the plan. No student in my experience has been more proactive, diligent and effective. She is on her way to being a transformative figure in her field.”
Palmer Global Fellows funds two study abroad experiences for fellows. The first is a faculty-led excursion at the end of their freshman year, such as Hartford’s experience alongside classmates in Italy, while the second follows a more personalized itinerary that fellows propose during their junior year to enhance their education or professional development.
Hartford leveraged the opportunity to travel to Poland, where she interned under a curator at the National Museum in Poznan during a conference titled Emergence, Transformation, Maintenance: Private Collections Open to the Public from the 18th Century to the Present Day.
The Office of Undergraduate Research’s Summer Research and Creative Activities Program allowed her to extend the trip to Berlin, where she went on to research a sculpture in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art at the Georg Kolbe Museum.
“The European art curator approached me about a year and a half ago, and he told me about this acquisition that they didn’t know much about,” she said. “The Georg Kolbe Museum was kind enough to communicate with me and lay out a bunch of resources, and I spent a couple of days researching the sculpture in their facilities.”
And before she headed home, Hartford made a final stop in Denmark, where she met with a senior researcher at the Statens Museum for Kunst. She is in the process of submitting an independent study/research application to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which would allow her to continue research into the museum’s Danish collection as well as an exhibition on Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi.
“Copenhagen was probably the highlight of my trip,” she said. “The connections that I made there were incredible. It was the same with Poland and Germany – just getting to talk with all these people who were all so supportive of what I was trying to achieve with this trip.”
Hartford said she’s grateful for the opportunities opened for her by Mednick, as well as Michelle Sullivan, an academic advisor who connected her with both the Art Museum Practices Concentration and Palmer Global Fellows, and Dr. Ammon Allred, a professor of philosophy and head of the Palmer Global Fellows Program.
“I’ve done a lot of incredible things at UToledo,” Hartford said, “but I wouldn’t have been able to do them without the support that I’ve had through this program and from Thor and Michelle and Ammon.”
